


With Strides Immeasurable

by whatcolor



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, M/M, Trespasser AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 13:37:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7803937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatcolor/pseuds/whatcolor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian has always been a liar: formidable around others but best still to himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Strides Immeasurable

It could have ended like this: the Inquisitor falls off the bridge, opens a rift to send his companions through and never makes it himself.

Or like this: the Inquisitor fights Corypheus, snatches the elven orb from his hands and splinters into a thousand pieces together with the blighted Magister.

Or, most probably, like this: the mark starts to act up, the Inquisitor keeps quiet because he doesn’t want to worry anyone and then it kills him under torturous circumstances.

Dorian has seen it all happen, the pictures in his head repeating themselves over and over even though they don’t fit the truth, and every time it feels like his heart is being ripped out of his chest bleeding and crushed. It still doesn’t prepare him for when it really happens.

Because this is how it truly ends: the Inquisitor steps through the Eluvian, the cursed mirror seals itself off and Dorian realizes that he will never see him again.

That realization, of course, comes only later. It comes _after_ he bangs his fist on the smooth surface that is not glass, tan hands leaving not a single trace (just like the man that went through). It comes _after_ he hurls magic at it, not elemental of course, he only wants to step through, not destroy it. It comes _after_ Bull’s hand falls on his shoulder to guide him, gently but firmly, away, after ugly sounds that he can barely suppress wrangle their way past his throat, past his lips, out into the open –

Dorian has always been a liar: formidable around others but best still to himself.

It’s just another lie that he tells himself as they leave the Elven ruins and step from Eluvian to Eluvian, as they return to the Winter Palace and Cassandra delivers the news with succinct words that fail to hide her grief.

It goes like this:

They were never meant to be living the happily ever after. The Inquisitor is a hero and heroes don’t get happy endings, just as gay Tevinter nobles never do. He has known this for a long time and therefore, he’s never imagined else. He’s never lain in _his_ arms, listened to _him_ painting pictures with sweet, sweet words and believed _him_ , because he has always known. He has known and therefore the world will carry on doing whatever it wills and he will learn to cope and take it, not in stride, no, but he will be taking it in some fashion.

It is only his petty heart, after all, that has shattered into those thousand pieces that he thought the Inquisitor would become at one point or another.

It was not his fault that his heart was not stupid enough to believe the lie.

**Author's Note:**

> My first Dragon Age fanfiction. I didn't intend my first piece in this fandom to be so angsty, but after that thing in Trespasser happened, this idea stuck in my head and wouldn't leave me alone, so there.  
> I have an idea of where this could go, so maybe I'll continue. We'll just have to see.


End file.
